Two students who wrote a letter of complaint about a lack of popcorn in a St Andrews supermarket have found that rhyme pays.
Isabelle Bousquette, 20, who studies classics, and physics student Tomi Baikie, 18, wrote a sonnet and sent it to Tesco chief Sir Richard Broadbent in September, after discovering the Fife town’s Tesco Metro was out of Butterkist salted caramel popcorn.
The sonnet included couplets such as: “I live in St Andrews, thus the issue:/‘No plans to restock’, you said with a sigh/So answer this, or send me a tissue/Have I butterkist my true love goodbye?”
Although Sir Richard resigned in October amid reports of accounting errors and falling sales due to competition from the likes of Lidl and Aldi, Isabelle and Tomi received a reply from the chairman’s office of the retail giant also written as a poem.
It assured the two students that they would be able to pick up their favourite popcorn in Dundee and Perth, and was sent with a £10 giftcard.
Now popcorn manufacturers Butterkist have written their own ode to the two students – along with a stash of their favourite popcorn.
The company’s poem includes such memorable lines as: “What could be worse than a popcorn drought?/We couldn’t bear for you to live without.”